Archive for the ‘Equality’ Category
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The Wealth of Canadians: How much, in the hands of how few?
… wealth was generally much more equally distributed by the mid-20th century than it had been in the pre-industrial era and the late 19th century. The share of all wealth held by the top 10 per cent in rich countries is typically very high, at 60 to 70 per cent, but this is still well below late-19th-century levels of 80 to 90 per cent… the rising ratio of wealth to GDP, combined with increasing inequality in the distribution of wealth since about 1970, may bring us back to the extreme economic inequality of the Victorian era
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Equality History | 1 Comment »
The Inequality Problem
America has always done better, liberals have always done better, when we are all focused on opportunity and mobility, not inequality, on individual and family aspiration, not class-consciousness. If we’re going to mobilize a policy revolution, we should focus on the real concrete issues: bad schools, no jobs for young men, broken families, neighborhoods without mediating institutions. We should not be focusing on a secondary issue and a statistical byproduct.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
War On Poverty, on its 50th birthday
… where people spent more than a quarter of their household budget on food in the 1960s, today it’s estimated at less than 10 per cent. But other expenses, such as housing and child care, have grown… the U.S. Census Bureau started accounting for all these factors by creating the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). Many critics of the official poverty rate expected that this would generate lower poverty readings; it did not. the SPM poverty rate in 2012 was 16 per cent – that’s just under 50 million Americans.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, participation, poverty
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
After waging War on Poverty for 50 years, let’s not surrender
The effect of the War on Poverty is especially pronounced on children and the elderly. The child poverty rate has fallen from nearly 30% to less than 20%… For the elderly, it has come down from more than 45% to 15%… One disquieting trend… after falling fairly consistently for some four decades, the poverty rate began to creep up after 2008. It’s not surprising that the crash and recession that year drove poverty up, but what’s disturbing is that it has kept going up.
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
More money won’t solve aboriginal woes
Canadians have financed growth in the aboriginal welfare state at a pace that eclipsed even the growth of the Canadian welfare state — and unfortunately with little improvement in the well-being of aboriginal Canadians to show for it. That makes it critical to track existing spending and to offer up policy reforms for federal and provincial governments. That is vastly preferable to the tried-and-failed approach of simply throwing more money at failed aboriginal polices.
Tags: budget, Indigenous, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Equality Policy Context | No Comments »
Time for a human-rights reboot
There is still no commitment to respecting the right of indigenous peoples to give free, prior and informed consent to natural resource projects impacting on their rights, lands and territories. The federal government’s refusal to fund health care equally for all refugees has been lambasted by provincial governments… The federal government’s refusal to lead the development of national strategies for poverty, food security and homelessness defies understanding.
Tags: globalization, ideology, multiculturalism, rights
Posted in Equality Policy Context | No Comments »
Why Inequality Matters
… inequality probably played an important role in creating our economic mess, and has played a crucial role in our failure to clean it up… And if you take a longer perspective, rising inequality becomes by far the most important single factor behind lagging middle-class incomes… Deregulation helped make the crisis possible, and the premature turn to fiscal austerity has done more than anything else to hobble recovery. Both consensuses, however, corresponded to the interests and prejudices of an economic elite whose political influence had surged along with its wealth.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, globalization, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | 1 Comment »
Why Rob Ford is mad as hell
Each year, the gap between the know-everythings and the know-nothings widens – income, education, opportunity. And each year, the know-nothings have a choice. They can play the know-everythings at their game – information, compromise, opportunity – and lose. Or they can play their own game – outrage, disruption – and sometimes win, or not lose by keeping the know-everythings from winning… their greatest delight is to see the know-everythings whine, to see how powerless the know-everythings are with only argument on their side. To see how powerless the powerful can be.
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, participation, standard of living
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Parliament finally shines a light on the politics of inequality
The majority report calls on the federal government to “formally review the WITB to determine how it could be expanded or modified to further benefit Canadians.”… “to make early childhood education and child care more accessible and affordable in all areas of the country, including through increased support for affordable early childhood and education and care programs.”… [and to] address… the needs of Aboriginal Peoples, especially in the area of education.
Tags: budget, child care, featured, ideology, Indigenous, poverty, standard of living, tax, women
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
The law, and history, speak for themselves [wife abuse]
… a woman is killed every six days in Canada by her male partner or former partner. Family courts cannot be relied upon to keep batterers away from women’s children — far from it. Welfare rates and policies force women back into the arms of abusers, our shelters are bursting, turning away women and children every day in this country, and the independent women’s movement… is under attack by government and in the media.
Tags: corrections, crime prevention, mental Health, women
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
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